The 1962 Yale men’s basketball team was not expected to contend for the Ivy League title, but ended the regualar season with nine straight victories to win the league.

The 1962 Yale men’s basketball team was not expected to contend for the Ivy League title, but ended the regualar season with nine straight victories to win the league.

Photo: YALE ATHLETICS

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Rick Kaminsky, now a retired urologist in Houston and then Yale’s leading scorer that season, said “It feels like a curse has been lifted,” with the 2016 Yale team earning a berth in the NCAA tournament. less

Rick Kaminsky, now a retired urologist in Houston and then Yale’s leading scorer that season, said “It feels like a curse has been lifted,” with the 2016 Yale team earning a berth in the ... more

Photo: YALE ATHLETICS

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Joe Vancisin, now 93 and residing in Branford during the summer months, was the head coach for the 1961-62 Yale men’s team.

Joe Vancisin, now 93 and residing in Branford during the summer months, was the head coach for the 1961-62 Yale men’s team.

Photo: YALE ATHLETICS

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For Yale basketball’s 1962 NCAA tourney team, ‘it feels like a curse has been lifted’

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NEW HAVEN >> Pregame warmups had concluded; final instructions already were delivered on the bench. Adrenaline pumped through Rick Kaminsky’s fingers as he walked to center court at Philadelphia’s Palestra, where Wake Forest was already waiting on a mid-March evening in 1962.

Just 19, the seal of his college basketball career barely cracked, Kaminsky fully grasped the moment.

Yale, a team few expected to finish higher than third in the Ivy League, had rolled off nine straight to win the league title and the right to play the Atlantic Coast Conference champion in the NCAA tournament.

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Where are they now

• Coach Joe Vancisin: Retired as Yale’s winningest coach in 1975. Assisted U.S. Olympic teams in 1976 and 1980. Inducted into College Basketball Hall of Fame in 2011. Now 93, he spends summers in Branford and winters in Naples, Florida.

• Bill Madden: Became an NBA agent and had several other business interests. Died in 2003.

• Dennis Lynch: Retired in 1999 from a money management firm, the Ivy Funds, he co-founded in New York. Recently relocated from New Hampshire to Essex.

• Dick Derby: Killed in an upstate New York automobile accident in September 1962.

• Bill Polinsky: Had a brief minor league baseball career in the Cubs system before entering sales. Is retired and living in Harwinton.

• Chip Oldt: An attorney for 37 years, succumbed to cancer in 2003.

• Stu Ludlum: A practicing attorney living in London, died after a heart attack while jogging in 1983 at age 42.

• Hank Bryant: Managing director at J.P. Morgan until his retirement in 1998.

• Bob Reum: CEO at Amsted Industries.

• Parks Odenweller: A financial analyst in Westchester County until his death in 1973.

• Rich Giegengack: An architect who designed several prominent Washington D.C. buildings. Succumbed to cancer in 2007.

• Martin Gerstel: Former chairman of the Alza Corporation. Now resides in Israel and is actively involved in venture capital.

• Dick Evans: Retired stock broker living in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio

• Steve Goulding: Chairman of the Board at Oak State Products in Peoria, Illinois.

• Dave Schumacher: Retired executive from electrical manufacturing firm in New Haven. Now lives in Cheshire.

— Chip Malafronte

“I can’t tell you how exciting it was to play that game,” said Kaminsky, now a retired urologist in Houston and then Yale’s leading scorer that season. “I was thinking ‘this is everything you play for; this is the ultimate opportunity.’”

Fifty-four years later, it remains the last time anyone at Yale took the court under lights so resplendent. That is until later this week, when the Bulldogs make their first NCAA tournament appearance since Kaminsky and his teammates dropped an overtime heartbreaker to Wake Forest.

Surviving members of the 1972 Miami Dolphins, the NFL’s only undefeated Super Bowl champion, reportedly pop champagne each fall when their record survives another season. There’s no such satisfaction at Yale. Those from the ’62 roster are thrilled to finally shed the label of being the school’s last NCAA tournament team, especially after the anguish of one-game Ivy playoff losses in 2002 and 2015.

“We never thought the game would stand the test of 54 years,” said Dennis Lynch, a starting guard who averaged 11.8 points that season. “How many people have sports writers calling them to talk about games that happened in 1962? I’m so happy for them.”

SURPRISE CONTENDER

When Yale won the Ivy League in 1962, it ended a relatively paltry five-year NCAA tourney drought. Behind John Lee, the Bulldogs lost to eventual national champ North Carolina in 1957. Eight years prior to that, Tony Lavelli and company lost to Illinois in the opening game.

Joe Vancisin, a Bridgeport native who’d returned to his home state in 1956 after serving as an assistant at Michigan and Minnesota, finished lower than third only once in five seasons as Yale’s coach.

The Bulldogs, coming off a 12-12 campaign, weren’t expected to contend with Penn and Princeton. Vancisin knew better.

“It was a great bunch of kids, really,” said Vancisin, 93, a longtime Branford resident who keeps close tabs on Yale from his winter home in Naples, Florida. “They were always nice and loose and it was a closely-knit group. They socialized together, which is difficult to do at Yale with all those 12 (residential) colleges. That helped them meld well as a team.”

Freshmen were ineligible for varsity sports at the time. A talented class, led by Kaminsky, Lynch, Dick Derby and Dave Schumacher, lost only one freshman game a year earlier.

Team captain Bill Madden, who passed away in 2003, averaged nearly 16 points a game and earned All-Ivy as a junior. Others, like 6-foot-8 center Steve Goulding and senior forward Dick Evans, who’d missed most of the previous season with a broken foot, were indispensable to Yale’s shuffle offense.

Kaminsky, the team’s leading scorer at 15.5 points per game, was a high school star in Houston who had offers from likes of UCLA, Kentucky and Texas. His mother wanted him to have an Ivy League education, which led him to Yale.

“Rick was a fantastic player,” said Lynch, a retired money manager who recently relocated to Essex. “He was a ferocious competitor. It was take no prisoners. Not something you saw much of in the Ivy League.”

Yale opened the season with an 18-point loss at UConn, but knocked off a strong Fordham club in the home-opener. Next up was Holy Cross, a nationally-ranked team led by Jack Foley, the nation’s second-leading scorer at 33.3 points that season. Yale won and began to believe.

A difficult non-conference schedule produced mixed results. There was a 21-point loss at Kentucky — legendary coach Adolph Rupp stood the entire game, yelling at referees in an altered shoe that allowed his toes to protrude out the end.

“Apparently, he’d had a gout attack,” Kaminsky said.

The Bulldogs won a holiday tournament, knocking off Evansville and Tennessee, only to lose the next game to Vanderbilt.

Momentum swung during the final stretch. A night after a dismal 22-point loss at Penn, Derby’s half-court heave at the buzzer beat three-time defending champ Princeton in overtime. Yale hadn’t won more than four straight games all season. The thriller at Princeton ignited a string of nine successive victories to close the regular season.

HEARTACHE IN PHILLY

Yale’s opponent in the NCAA tournament, Wake Forest, was considered a heavy favorite. Len Chappell, the ACC’s player of the year, averaged nearly 31 points. Guard Billy Packer, best known as a longtime college basketball broadcaster, was Wake’s star guard.

“The line was Wake Forest giving 11 points, which is pretty significant,” Lynch said. “There was a lot of skepticism but we didn’t think much of the oddsmakers. We had become a good team throughout the course of the season with critical wins that prepared us for any opponent.”

The night before the game Yale was scheduled for a brief shoot-around at the Palestra that turned into a 90-minute practice. A night watchman eventually cut the lights to chase the team out of the gym.

Wake Forest got all they could handle from Yale. Coach Bones McKinney, an ordained minister known for his sideline antics, became so frustrated with his team’s play that he adjourned to the bleachers for a spell.

Yale would get its chance to win. The game was tied when Schumacher was fouled with two seconds remaining in regulation. He missed the front end of a 1-and-1 free throw opportunity; Kaminsky’s put-back attempt hit front rim and bounced out.

At least three Wake Forest players, certain they’d lost the game, were so relieved they broke down and cried in the huddle prior to overtime.

Kaminsky fouled out early in the extra session, and the Bulldogs had little left in the tank. Wake Forest wound up winning 92-82.

There was dead silence in the dressing room afterward. Each individual player seemed to believe if they’d only done a little more the game never would have been in doubt. Even those who didn’t play a minute wondered if they’d worked harder in practice, they could have cracked the lineup and helped give a starter more rest.

“A lot of people were telling us we played great, that even though we’d lost we overplayed,” Kaminsky said. “I was never able to look at it that way. I still think about how stupid I was to foul out; I still wish Dave hadn’t missed that free throw. It still hurts today.”

NO DYNASTY

Since Yale’s nucleus was mostly sophomores, most figured there would be a couple more NCAA appearances in the cards. Though highly successful, they fell just short of the ultimate goal.

Derby, a promising forward whose half-court shot had beaten Princeton, was killed in an automobile accident while returning from a Labor Day weekend trip to Lake George, just days before the start of the 1962 fall semester.

“We were counting on Dick, a great player who would have made that team even better the next year,” Vancisin said. “It was a sad affair. The kids wanted to do something special for him. I think his death had a great effect on them their entire lives.”

There were other factors. Princeton improved considerably by welcoming a prolific player from its freshman squad. Bill Bradley would soon become the nation’s consensus player of the year, leading the Tigers to three straight NCAA appearances and the 1965 Final Four.

Had Bradley stuck to his original college plan, the course of Yale basketball may have been quite different. As the top high school recruit in the country he received 75 scholarship offers, but narrowed his list to Yale and Duke. On his visit to New Haven, he stayed with Kaminsky, then a Yale freshman.

Bradley eventually chose a full scholarship to Duke.

“We tried everything to convince him to come to Yale,” Kaminsky said. “We were disappointed, but figured if he was going to Duke it would be no problem for us. Over the summer he apparently worked with some Princeton guys, changed his mind, enrolled at Princeton and when we came back in September, there he was. That was a downer.”

Successive 11-3 seasons made the class of 1964 the most successful in Yale basketball history. They also carried a 54-year burden, one it’s happy to see expunged.

“It’s hard to believe Yale hasn’t been back since, I mean really,” Kaminsky said. “It feels like a curse has been lifted.”